


Aeviternity

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: (off screen), Different lifetimes, Kissing, M/M, Mentions of graphic violence, Rutting, Semi-Public Sex, comparisons to achilles and patroclus, slight magical realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 19:10:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5139284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"He does not know me."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"Not now," Will agrees, amused. "Now he knows nothing. But he did. Who alive does not know the name of Achilles?"</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Hannibal's smile narrows his eyes, and he rests his hand against Will's on his arm. "My deeds are great, and numerous. Sung as praise by those who are bewitched by legend, and whispered as warning by those who may find themselves at the point of my sword. But you -"</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"But I."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"But you have stolen my glory."</i>
</p><p>Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, Patroclus and Achilles... what are they but the same souls separated through decades and aeons and ages?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aeviternity

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a super interesting prompt regarding the two of our murder husbands, post fall, imagining themselves as the Greek heroes, as they always have been, in truth, right? Immense thanks to Suzy for allowing us to write another one of her fantastic ideas!
> 
> HUGE cuddles to [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/) for being invaluable, incredible and a downright saint when we toss her several (dozen) chapters at once to read.

_“And this?”_

When blood hits snow, it steams. It melts crevices and valleys into the ice and builds a new landscape of its own horror. And then it freezes in its final throes of attempting to make something of itself outside of a useless host. Just as useless, in the end. Good for keeping something alive, but not good enough to live on its own.

Will licks his bloody lip into his mouth, and with a laugh, gently nudges Hannibal with his shoulder. “What of it?”

“Tell me.”

Will shakes his head but it is hardly a denial, his feet weave elegantly through sidewalk sludge alongside Hannibal's. Their shoes are pristine. Only a smear of blood - here and there on exposed throat or light fabric - mars their clothing. But Will proudly sports a bloody lip. Hannibal, a split brow. Will slips an arm through Hannibal’s, and the gaudy check of Hannibal’s suit sits surprisingly well with Will’s complexion.

“A kick,” Will recalls. “By sandaled foot and wrath behind it. Soldier to soldier. The sand stung my eyes.” Will’s nose wrinkles in amusement. “He thought I was you.”

"He does not know me."

"Not now," Will agrees, amused. "Now he knows nothing. But he did. Who alive does not know the name of Achilles?"

Hannibal's smile narrows his eyes, and he rests his hand against Will's on his arm. "My deeds are great, and numerous. Sung as praise by those who are bewitched by legend, and whispered as warning by those who may find themselves at the point of my sword. But you -"

"But I."

"But you have stolen my glory."

"Borrowed."

"And after so many years together," Hannibal muses. Will accepts the solidarity of Hannibal beside him to help carry the weight of his own wounds, but a finger prods his side and Will winces. "And this?"

Will thinks of the moment the man pulled a gun. He had expected it, of course, but he still found himself disappointed seeing it. He had expected more. Too many men hide behind guns, as though a trigger held the same capacity to save as a hand on an artery fast pulsing free.

As though, as though, as though...

“This is yours.”

“I know.”

“Armor borrowed to protect a lover,” Will’s eyes narrow as he sidesteps a fallen pile of snow, leaning against Hannibal as he does. “To borrow your fame and name and power for a moment, to buy you time. And that,” Will presses a palm against the sore spot Hannibal had chosen. “A spear taken on your behalf, and proudly.”

The gun had never fired. It had no time to. But Will thinks that at least the man had enough imagination to still use the weight and metal of it against his fragile body. He remembers being pierced. He wonders if he would have felt every inch of that spear slip into him, slow and dragging, deliberate. He shivers. He presses his head to Hannibal's shoulder.

“And this?” he asks, tracing fingertips against the bruise that will form dark beneath Hannibal’s greying stubble the next morning.

Hannibal all but purrs at the touch. Tilting his head against Will's gloved fingers, he leans close enough to trace his nose against his husband's hairline, breathing in the widening spiral of once-coiled adrenaline, unfurling now to spring-sweet euphoria. Frost crackles beneath their feet, and when Hannibal speaks, his words spill grey breath fading against Will's hair.

"A mighty fist, driven in desperation," he says. "Your guise bought me time to fetch the chariot that would show one and all the fall of Hector, but I underestimated our enemy. So many innocents have fallen by his hand, and it was that same hand that struck out and caught me unaware."

"You?" Will laughs. "Unaware?"

His nose wrinkles when he smiles, a flicker of pain appearing as Hannibal slides his arm around Will's waist to keep him steady, giving way quickly to warm endorphins, pinking his cheeks. "Distracted," Hannibal allows, "in worry for what became of my Patroclus, who was nowhere to be seen. And still I chained him -"

"Still you did."

"Mighty Hector, fallen."

"Lashed to his own chariot," grins Will, and Hannibal cannot find it in himself to resist, after such labors of their night. Their footsteps still and Hannibal turns to Will, in the center of the road where they walk, lit by little more than street lamps burning bright as torch lights in the distance. He grasps Will's face in his hands and brings their bruised mouths together.

Hannibal does not need to speak his relief for it to be felt.

They part only enough to breathe clouds between them, and Hannibal thumbs along the livid bruise that darkens the freckles beneath Will's eye. "And this," he whispers.

A moan, his only answer.

Will turns his face into the touch, gentle, familiar, so, so welcome. His heart beats too quickly, remembering. Iron and nicotine and oil and snow. Adrenaline hot on his tongue and cold in his blood. He had lashed out, the chains only binding his legs, and Will had struck back, again and again, a meticulously practiced rhythm of punches against yielding flesh.

“This Hector lived,” Will reminds him, “as his chariot was prepared for him.”

Another kiss, then, between them, Will’s body stretching up to coil his arms around Hannibal before him. Years loved, years known, but only four together in freedom so far. Will clicks his tongue, a deliberate metronome of memory, and he sees again the car indicate to turn, wheels crunching snow and salt and gravel beneath them.

His Achilles proud in the chariot, taking his time to increase the speed by increments the farther from the battlefield they got. Mile by mile, anger pulsing his heart and relief his soul, turning to watch the ghost of his Patroclus beside him, coiling smoke in his mouth and pushing it in rings past bloodied lips.

Will wraps a hand in Hannibal's scarf and drags him into the nearest alley, barely lit and quieter, pushing himself back towards a wall and Hannibal close against him.

“And this?” Will breathes, arousal painting the steam of their breath golden. He strokes his fingers through the blood on Hannibal’s brow, rocks up to rub slowly against the leg that snakes between his own.

Hannibal grins sharp-toothed and bright. A feral nuzzle tangles their mouths together as he bears heavy against Will, pinning him to rough brick that snares the expensive suitcoat still hanging too large on Will's frame. When the strength of his thigh no longer suffices, when Will's eager rutting grows frantic, Hannibal shoves his hand between them and curls his palm.

"You," he laughs, a low note snared by his beloved's savage kiss. "Your elbow, elegant Patroclus, in practice together for this battle. Reopened when I left the chariot too quickly to see what remained of our quarry."

He snares Will by his thigh, hoisting a dirty leg against his hip. They thrust together. They pant together. They live and love and die together, one being long ago made two, now joined again to wholeness.

"And this," whispers Achilles, freeing Will from his pants and baring hot skin to frigid air.

"And this," answers Patroclus, teeth bruising against Hannibal's throat.

They press together, uncaring for who might see, for who might stop to watch. They are shameless in their pride and worship of each other. Will works open Hannibal’s pants to slide his hand within, laughing a low, purring sound when Hannibal takes them in hand together and strokes, their lips parted against each other, breathing heavy and quick with eyes barely open.

Closeness, over decades and centuries and aeons.

Over and over, just like this.

And this, and this.

“Take me home,” Will moans after a moment, hands grasping Hannibal’s suit jacket, pressing himself close up against him. Behind them trails the long phantom of their drawn Hector, miles and miles out of town and smeared beyond recognition along the deserted highway. The trail will lead to the city, to the heart of the corruption he had wrought. It will not lead to them.

Their shoes are clean. Their consciences pristine.

And they will celebrate the fall of Troy not in the mourning of their namesakes, but savoring sweetest victory with wine spilled between their kisses.

Hannibal holds Will’s bottom lip between his teeth, his own bared snarling. Will’s pulse races when Hannibal licks against the tender skin held fast; he knows better than anyone the brutality of his champion. But Achilles yields to the only one who could ever move him to do so, sweeping a kiss across Will’s mouth before stepping back from him, another, eyes hooded and hair tousled.

He tucks himself back into his pants with the glimmer of a smile, and long strides carry him from the alley to their own chariot, awaiting.

The world is theirs and they have claimed it, after countless trials and tribulations. Like the Paris and Troilus and nameless others who preceded him, this Hector was no hero. A savage man in the garb of the civilized, admirable suits and a fine car, a corner office high atop the city. A cruel man whose dealings in the boardroom found their end in the assault of the most vulnerable people far beneath him - the homeless, the helpless, the hungry. If the police knew of his guilt, then his power made them accomplices.

And where Hannibal has sought to show the rude the error of their ways, Will instead rebalances Justice’s scales with blood.

Hannibal holds open the car door and a hand for Will to clasp. He does, gracefully slipping into the passenger seat, and pulling Hannibal’s palm to his lips to kiss. Then he lets him go, closes his eyes and lays his head back as Hannibal circles the car to get in behind the wheel. Their bones ache with the most blissful exhaustion. Their bodies soon shall, as well, as one presses worship and the other divinity to each other’s skin.

Two of them, against the world. Against the well-wishing and advice of friends, against the entire nature of their becoming, they are one, once more, together here as they were on the fields of sand and dunes of dust.

Hannibal starts the car and Will tells him he loves him.

Within, the house is cold. Within, the house is always cold. No more quiet taps of furred feet against the empty floors at so late an hour, no more the plucking tune of a harpsichord at all. Silence, now, until they dispel it themselves. Will snares Hannibal close and bites a kiss against him. Patroclus the healer, Patroclus the holy, Patroclus the kind, and the most powerful, with Achilles’ love in his heart and his voice in his ear.

“Let me taste your bruises,” Hannibal whispers, and only then does Will become Patroclus the fallen.

Myth forms itself from reality, mundane truths become extraordinary. As always has been and as always will be, when Patroclus falls, so does Achilles. Battered fingers bleeding from bruised knuckles snare Hannibal by his jacket and drag him forward. He follows Will up the stairs that lead to the second floor of their flat, pressing him to walk backward, hands against his waist.

Copper fills their mouths as banged lips once more part against hard teeth. They bite, they gasp, they begin to loosen the other’s armor with roving hands and grasping fingers. Hannibal shoves his jacket from Will’s shoulders, sweeping his tongue against his stubbled jaw and sinking a kiss against his throat as Will squirms free.

“I should -”

“Stay,” Hannibal answers.

“But the dogs -”

“Stay.”

So Will stays, obedient and coy as he shifts back against the bed and lets himself fall into it, the plush pillows shifting around him before he carelessly tosses them to the floor. Hannibal goes, to check the hounds, to check the house, to take his time so that Will can take his own.

In their tent, the lovers make their own heaven. Beyond Gods, beyond destinies - they have overcome both and will continue to. In this lifetime and the next and the next. Patroclus peels himself from Achilles’ armor, heavy and familiar but not his own. Piece by piece, the cuirass, the shin guards, the heavy leather, all fall to the floor as he presents himself for his prince and waits.

By his word, Hannibal will have him, by his word, he will stop. There is immense power in being unseen, in not being suspect. That power grows with practice, it grows with time, and eventually it becomes an entirely different beast.

Hannibal in the doorway, Will draws his knees up and spreads them, and watches his husband from beneath a curling fringe of messy hair.

“In all the world,” Hannibal murmurs, and Will draws a deep and shivering breath to fill him. He knows the words that follow as if they were the sound of his own heart; he has heard them nightly for four years, and he imagined them for many before that. “In any world, in a thousand lifetimes, I have never witnessed greater beauty than you.”

Will laughs because if he doesn’t then he’ll weep. He drags his hand across his face and rests his arm over his eyes, watching the slow approach of his champion as he divests himself of breastplate and greaves, of tunic and of sword, his knife set aside on the shelf as he bares himself. In the mirror above the dresser, he watches Will bring his legs together and let them part again. Pale skin smudged with dirt and brown with blood, Will stretches both eager and always charmingly shy.

Along his belly bends a curve of darkened, raised skin. Will’s fingers follow it, before trailing along the ridge of his hip and down to the thatch of hair between his legs, and the thickening member between. Hannibal could watch him all evening. He has, several times, Will coiling and beautiful, panting his pleasure into the pillows as he squirms and arches and twists in bed, tempting Hannibal closer and closer. He has watched Will come, and bent to worship him with his tongue and work him clean before working him up again.

Patroclus was always shy until he had Achilles in his arms.

Here, he is the worshipped, here, he is the adored. The champion to his soldier, the meaning of his life.

There is no life at all without him.

Hannibal kneels to the bed, with a flicker of pain across his features that softens quickly. Hardly in their prime, and atop such exertions as their warfare wrought tonight, they will both ache in the morning. Familiar hands will rub tired muscles. Kisses will catch as they grumble their minor agonies to the other. But for now, together like this, their hearts strike a drumbeat that rises triumphant only after victory.

For now, together like this, there is no place for pain.

Hannibal stretches long between Will’s legs, accepting their ensnarement with a hum. He brushes their noses together and his eyes wrinkle in the corners. Only their kiss is still combatant, fiercely tangled, yielding to the lick of the other’s tongue and mingled voices moaning low.

Will breaks the kiss first, arching his neck as he drops his head back, and blindly seeks over the body he knows so well.

“This here,” he breathes. “Tell me of this.”

The bite is new, dark, still, and blooming the bruise to a galaxy against Hannibal’s shoulder. Will gave that to him, clinging to him in raw passion, whimpering his name and begging, pleading, in any of the broken languages he now knows for Hannibal to not stop _never stop, God, oh God, fuck, Hannibal -_

Hannibal’s smile widens, and he looks to the mark - as if he doesn’t know it intimately, as if he hadn’t spent that morning pressing his fingers against it in memory. “An extraordinary young man,” he murmurs. Will arches a brow and snorts, grinning. “An extraordinary _younger_ man,” Hannibal amends, “who insisted upon leaving his mark.”

He reaches between them to slick himself from the little bottle discreetly uncapped that Will brought to the bed. When he lowers himself, it is with a gentle rocking and a steady push. Will’s legs tremble against him until he tightens them against Hannibal’s hips enough to stop their shaking, familiar pressure opening him.

“What about this,” Hannibal whispers, against the scar that runs crooked as a smile from the corner of Will’s lips. “Have I told you what I think of this?”

Will parts his lips just to groan softly, easing his body into a blissful arch as Hannibal enters him, as his soldier holds him close and sheds the dust and blood of battle to be welcomed home again.

“Tell me again,” Will grins, draping one hand back to grasp the headboard, the other to slip through Hannibal’s greying blonde hair to grip it in a possessive fist.

Achilles knelt for no man but for Patroclus, as Hannibal bends for no other but Will. A laugh hitches his breath as he tilts his head where Will moves him, and he rounds his hips to find his home inside him.

“Bravest of all the Greeks,” murmurs Hannibal, as Will splays his fingers and releases him. He nuzzles against the scar and marks it with his lips, from the corner of Will’s mouth to the rise of his cheek. “Who faced the claws of a dragon and lived.”

“And this,” whispers Will, as the bed rocks beneath them and his fingers find the round scar on his belly, pierced through long ago.

“The same dragon,” Hannibal says, amused and breathless, “though I was far less valiant.” 

“There is not a day the great Achilles is not valiant,” Will points out, panting his pleasure as Hannibal finds that spot within him and thrusts, shallow and deliberate, to bring his voice to arching pitch.

“He becomes just a man when his Patroclus is threatened,” Hannibal whispers, shifting to loom over the younger man in bed, head ducked so his hair brushes tickling against Will’s forehead, lips parted so he can taste the moans that he pushes from his lover. His brave Will, the man for whom he would have ended it all.

He had gone, fearless, into the abyss of the sea, because Patroclus had held him true and whispered his promises against him. Love, and nothing less. Love, and nothing more powerful than that.

“And this?” Will gasps, drawing his knees high up against Hannibal, his toes pointed back to the bed in his pleasure. He traces the scar over his back, the brand as wide as his palm when he presses to it. “And this?” Countless cuts and bends and breaks, remembered and reminded, sometimes inflicted one upon the other, sometimes saved for them to discover in pockets of time like this, when all they have is each other, and all they need is the air to share together.

Two lungs and one heart.

_“And this?”_


End file.
